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The Nice and The Not-So-Nice

The nice:
I tend to stop by the drug store late-ish in the evening, so I’ve gotten a chance to chat with some of the store clerks, since it’s slow.

Tonight the soft butch-ish clerk*said I always had the nicest dressed and a she looked forward to seeing what I was wearing and also said she really liked the necklaces I wear. It wasn’t a hitting-on kind comment, just a straight up compliment.

Later on, as I was checking out a young Filipina/o clerk — who definitely sets off my trans-dar — coo’d over my manicure.

Yes, Caitlyn Jenner isn’t the only little glamour-puss around.

Damn you Prime Directive!* I’d love to be able to ask them about their changing appearance.

* The Trans Prime Directive is “Thou shalt not out another trans person.” While well-meaning, it does mean trans people are isolated from each other in a way that gays and lesbians aren’t, because you can’t do the subtle body language/comments to acknowledge to each other that you’re “members of the club.”

The not-so-nice:
I’m supposed to be working on a reverse strip-tease number (start with panties and pasties and put on clothes) for an upcoming show that focuses on body politics. It’s my “gentle and light-hearted” act on gender dysphoria — i.e. in my case clothes do help make the woman.

Unfortunately, I’ve been procrastinating badly on it. Partly it’s part of larger problem of “perfectionism procrastination,” — but a big part is that it’s unexpectedly kicking up my dysphoria.

Partly triggered from a photo of a show I did Friday, where the cast is all on stage for the curtain call and I look like a fucking giantess compared to the rest of the cast. Yes I know there’s Amazonian-sized women out there — in fact there was one who’s six feet tall in the show, but she’s a lot more slender than I am.

Partly trigged by the weather getting colder and realize I’ll have to go back to wearing hip pads. (I’d lucked out this summer with a couple of sundresses that had enough structure that I could get away without wearing hip pads.)

Yeah, First World problems…. but all of those are just reminders of the body I have and the body I’d prefer but won’t ever have — at least until they invent height reduction and shoulder-width reduction surgery.